Improve your offices processes with hot-desking

Everywhere you go, it seems that hot desking is the hot office spatial management technique. Corporate real estate prices are through the roof, and to add insult to injury, most expensive office spaces are under-utilized. Hot desking helps optimize those spaces and dollars by allowing multiple people to share the same workstation or desk at different times.

When done right, hot desking is convenient for employees, allowing flexibility and mobility. It’s also a boon to companies who can reduce wasted and under-utilized space, which can save some serious coin. This is particularly pertinent for enterprise organizations with multiple locations and government agencies who typically utilize many buildings throughout a city or municipality.

So how can these organizations take advantage of the many benefits of hot desking while ensuring their employees don’t get burned by a chaotic hot desk environment?

The benefits of hot desking and choosing the right software

Imagine this. You are a program director at City Hall. As you stroll into your office in the morning, you check your Outlook Calendar and see that today you have meetings at the Department of Health, the Department of Disability Services, and the Office of Homeless Services. Each department happens to be in a different office than your own.

You have a few hours in between your second and third meetings; just enough time to catch up on email and check off a few items from your task list. But it would waste precious minutes of a busy day to hoof it back to City Hall when you would just have to be back in this current office later for your final meeting. A coffee shop would be fine, but you would rather settle in at a comfortable desk in a space dedicated to work.

Fortunately for you, there are multiple areas spanning multiple floors of this building that are dedicated to hot desking. Now, to find one.

You pull up Outlook, click to your Meeting Management interface, and select “Boston desk” in the list of meeting purpose subjects. A list of available desks appears. You click on one. Boom: it’s yours.

When you arrive at the desk, your name is on the display screen. Doesn’t that feel nice?

You’re noodling over a particularly tricky budget puzzle and a quick brainstorming session with one of your colleagues would be really valuable. So you pull up your Outlook again, enter the colleague’s name in the same subject box you used to find your desk earlier. You see she’s also hot desking in the same office. Score! Minutes later, you’re at her desk, guided by the interactive map.

When you return to your desk later, you adjust your privacy settings so you are temporarily unsearchable. Time to bang out some serious work without interruption.

An Outlook alert reminds you it’s almost time for your next meeting already. So you pull up the interactive map right from Outlook on your desktop to find the meeting room location and view step-by-step directions to get there.

Now that’s what we call making the most of every minute.

Hot desk booking in a familiar interface

You don’t have to just imagine that scenario if your company has AskCody. That’s because in addition to AskCody’s proven meeting management and room booking, we’ve now made it possible to reserve hot desks on the spot in the same user-friendly interface.

Here’s a quick look at what’s under the hood of AskCody’s hot desking capabilities.

Find a hot desk on the spot with AskCody Room Booking

Room finding: it’s not just for rooms. AskCody Room Booking lets you quickly and easily search for all bookable resources across locations. Users just sort by purpose and select the hot desk option. The platform displays the availability of each hot desk. If a desk is occupied, users can see who has booked it, and when it will be released.

Some companies choose to display the names of each room or hot desk reservation on small screens outside the meeting room or attached to the desk. When a user books that space, their name appears on the screen, adding a personal touch for workers outside the comforts of their own office.

No need to ever click between interfaces

With its complete integration with Outlook and Microsoft 365, AskCody offers users the convenience of accessing all its power directly within their familiar Outlook and Microsoft 365 interface. This modern add-on eliminates the need for outdated third-party tools, non-integrated SharePoint sites, third-party webpages, or even traditional paper-based bookings.

This integration not only enhances user experience and saves time but also ensures a cohesive and efficient workflow. Users can effortlessly find and reserve hot desks, book meeting rooms, and manage their schedules without having to rely on external tools or navigate through multiple platforms. With AskCody's seamless integration, the entire workspace management process becomes more streamlined and user-friendly.

Find colleagues, be found, or go anonymous with strong security settings

Security is second nature at government agencies. It is at AskCody too. All AskCody software, infrastructure, and cloud hosting is GDPR compliant.

And just because you are taking advantage of a hot desk does not mean you can’t get a little privacy. AskCody’s security settings make it possible to set hot desk reservations to private so users cannot be found within the system and names are not displayed on any public screens. Rest assured that all data is locked in the cloud tighter than Fort Knox. Inversely, every user who has selected to be public can be instantly discovered for those looking for a quick meeting of the minds with a particular colleague.

Management knows exactly how the office is used

AskCody’s Analytics & Insights tool is a game-changer when it comes to understanding how each hot desk, meeting room, and public workspace is utilized. With this tool, management receives a comprehensive daily report that provides key usage metrics, giving them a clear understanding of how the workplace is performing. This valuable information not only helps management assess the overall efficiency of the office, but it also informs them of the specific needs and preferences of each location.

By analyzing the data provided by AskCody's Analytics & Insights tool, management gains insight into which types of desks, rooms, and technology are most popular among employees. Armed with this knowledge, they are empowered to make informed decisions about where to expand or consolidate resources. This strategic approach ensures that the office space is optimized to meet the needs of the employees, creating a better working environment for everyone.

For example, if the data shows that certain types of meeting rooms are consistently in high demand while others are rarely utilized, management can allocate resources accordingly. They can expand the number of popular meeting rooms or repurpose underutilized ones to better meet the needs of employees. Similarly, if the data reveals that certain types of desks or technology are in high demand, management can make informed decisions about expanding those resources to improve productivity and employee satisfaction.

Employees get consistency, organizations get scalability

AskCody is easily scalable, so organizations can expand or contract and the software will follow suite, making it an ideal choice for enterprises and government agencies. Because the AskCody suite integrates every tool seamlessly with the Outlook and Microsoft 365 tools employees already use most, this is the cost effective option for companies looking to take the pain out of their meeting management and resource booking process.

Today’s workforce is constantly on the move. Wouldn’t it be nice if you never had to sweat the details when looking for a place to call home for the day?

So, what are the benefits of hot desking?

Hot desking has become a popular office spatial management technique that optimizes expensive under-utilized office spaces by allowing multiple people to share a desk at different times. However, the lack of advance reservations can lead to unproductive time wasted in finding a desk.

Hot desking software such as AskCody's makes it possible to reserve hot desks on the spot in the same interface as Microsoft's Outlook, along with proven meeting management and room booking features. The software's security settings make it possible to set hot desk reservations to private while the workplace analytics & insights tool provides management with a full picture of how each workspace is utilized.

With these features, hot desking becomes convenient for employees while also reducing wasted and under-utilized space for companies, saving money and optimizing office space.